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In 2015, the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) “declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen...It's important to note that the IARC didn't do new research (that's not its job) but evaluated existing research.” Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup. Roundup is a popular herbicide to spray on GMO crops that have been modified to tolerate it. In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency " reviewed over 55 epidemiological studies conducted on the possible cancer and non-cancer effects of glyphosate and concluded that this body of research does not provide evidence to show that glyphosate causes cancer… The IARC is charged with identifying substances that can cause cancer, but not the levels of exposure that are risky.” There is such a little amount of exposure to humans, that it has no effect. People against GMOs have said that when the Genetically Modified (GM) crops are planted, the farmers need to spray more pesticides for every acre. ”That's true of soybeans but not of corn (corn and soy being the two largest GMO crops, together making up about half our crop acreage and going primarily into animal feed, biofuel and processed food). GMO supporters point out that, even when more pounds are being used, glyphosate is replacing more-toxic herbicides” (Haspel).
Brian Hrdlicka, a regional agronomist at Farmers Win Coop, has seen someone prove the safety of the herbicide spray, Roundup, by taking a shot of it at a conference in 2010.
In the year 1900, the ratio of people with Typhoid Fever was 100 per 100,000, because oftentimes, the meat or dairy had been infected with Salmonella. With the use of small pesticides, the new science of pasteurization, and more research, that number decreased a lot. By 1920, those 100 people had decreased to 33.8, and by 1950, 1.7. A different disease, Trichinosis, is a disease that people can catch by eating raw/undercooked meat that has the parasite called Trichinella. “During the 1940s, studies of autopsied muscle samples showed that 16% of persons in the United States had trichinellosis.” There were 300-400 people infected per year and 10-20 people would die from it. With the use of pesticides and more modern technologies, the number of those people has gone down a lot. “The rate of infection has declined markedly; from 1991 through 1996, three deaths and an average of 38 cases per year were reported” (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report).
Without the use of pesticides, it would be incredibly hard to feed all the people on the earth. Pesticides and GMOs are what help plants grow during the months that they do. GMOs can reduce the growing time of some plants by weeks. “A 1992 task force on pesticides for the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology estimated that all crop production in the world decline 30% and food costs would increase by 50% or more without the use of agricultural pesticides….long-term trials on rice show that without pesticides, losses amount to more than 30% of the crop.” That is extremely bad because the people that are already struggling to buy food, would definitely not be able to get enough to feed themselves, much less if they had a family. There are researchers that are developing and testing some new pesticides called glyphosate and sulfonylurea that would replace the previous pesticides that use more bad chemicals, and they wouldn’t have to spray so much. ”Many new herbicides are used at rates as low as 0.02 pounds per acre in comparison to 2 pounds per acre for older herbicides…. active ingredients are present in amounts so small that their presence in the environment cannot be measured” (Bailey).
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